MERCER COUNTY Target aids career center attendance program

The Target store in Niles is helping a Mercer County school be on target with attendance.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
MERCER, Pa. -- They're calling it On Target With Target, and the goal is to encourage pupils at the Mercer County Career Center to attend classes.
The vocational-technical school has enlisted the support of the Target store in the Eastwood Mall, Niles, changing the name of an attendance program from On Target With Attendance to On Target With Target.
The program, launched this fall, rewards good attendance with a chance to win some substantial prizes, including a personal computer.
Store agrees to help
Principal Larry Klemens contacted the Target store to see if there was interest in helping, and the store has responded with a variety of assistance, including donating some of the prizes to be awarded, said Liz Rodgers, career education coordinator at the school.
The store has also donated the film and processing for pictures of students meeting the attendance goal. Those photos are placed on a large replica of the Target signature red and white bull's-eye built by the school's carpentry students. The display hangs in the school's main lobby.
Attendance hasn't really been a problem at the career center, which provides technical and vocational education for 431 pupils in grades 10 through 12. Margo Anderle, special populations coordinator, said attendance ran at 94.5 percent last year and the state rewarded that performance with about $17,000 in an attendance incentive grant.
Some of that money has been used for classroom computer software and other items, but some of it was also set aside to buy prizes for On Target with Target, Anderle said.
Rules to qualify
To be eligible, students can't miss more than two days of classes in any of the year's four nine-week grading periods.
The names of those meeting that requirement are put into a pot to be drawn for prizes.
In addition to a computer giveaway each period, there are TV-VCR combinations, portable CD players, cordless telephones, clock radios, cameras, portable radios, desk lamps and a variety of other prizes.
Pupils attend only half-day sessions at the career center, and the school will hold assemblies Wednesday morning and afternoon to outline the attendance program.
There will be some prizes drawn at those assemblies, but the first regular nine-week grading period drawing will be held next week, Anderle said.